Beyond the Sea
by ExpositionFairy
Summary: Alan Bradley finally comes face to face with the digital doppelganger that's haunted him for half his life. [Sequel to "Symbiosis"]
1. Falling Down

_Dying scream, makes no sound_

_Calling out to all that I've ever known_

_Here am I, lost and found_

_Calling out to all…_

* * *

December 19, 2010

Fifty-two hours.

Alan knows that's roughly how long it's been because of his Android, which still still has the timestamp saved in his Dialed Calls folder: **21:37 12/17/10 Roy Kleinberg (818-555-1123). **The call he'd made to Roy after he'd finally managed to convince himself that the number blinking on his old pager's LCD screen was real, just after 9:00 p.m. two days ago. There's also the midnight board meeting later that same night as a marker, too. Approximately 38 hours since then, plus the better part of the 17th before.

That's how long he's been awake.

He'd _intended_ to catch at least a catnap yesterday morning, after returning from the arcade, but his mind had been racing, confusion and half-formed speculations mixing with a certain building eagerness. Whatever Sam had found at the arcade had galvanized him somehow. After nearly a decade of stasis things were finally going to move _forward _again, starting _now, _and when he'd gotten back to the house he'd simply poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down in front of the glass patio doors, watching the rising sun burn off the marine-layer fog and turning the events of that endless day over in his head.

_You were right. About everything._

About what? What did that even mean?

He'd tried again around noon, shucking off his loafers and stretching out on the leather sofa in his office at Encom Tower. His morning strategy session with Sam had been productive but exhausting, and if he didn't recharge his batteries at least a little before the oncoming storm of memos and press conferences and announcements of the sweeping structural changes to come he reckoned he'd spontaneously combust. But that hadn't worked, either; no sooner had he begun to doze than he was overcome by a feeling of suffocation so overwhelming in its intensity that for a moment he'd been convinced he was having a heart attack. He'd sat bolt upright, gasping and sweating, and it'd taken him a good ten minutes just to bring his breathing back under control.

_Can't shut down now, _he'd thought dimly, barely aware of it. _Can't shut down or I'll never be able to start back up._

By hour 36 a dangerous sort of giddiness had begun to overtake him. The press conference had been partly to blame; it had been _insane_, and Alan had caught some of that energy and insanity almost like a cold, high on caffeine and adrenaline and punch-drunk from sleep deprivation. His memory had begun to slip, along with his judgment—in the midst of the hurricane Alan had forgotten that the last time he'd spoken to Roy had been their three-way Skype call the night before. He'd set Roy to tracking the page, but he hadn't even called him back to report in on Sam's trip to the arcade.

_I scared the shit out of him, _Alan thinks, a sick little twist of guilt worming through his gut. _Christ, I was so far gone I didn't even think to send him a text message. He saw that press conference without a damn word from me since, what the hell was it, 2 am the night before? 3? For all he knew Sam and I had decided to throw him under the FBI bus. And I just bopped on into his place at half-past dawn with a big old grin on my face, thinking it was going to be a __**good **__surprise when I told him he was back on board for real. I'm lucky he didn't break my nose._

They'd worked it out fairly quickly, in the end—nearly a quarter-century of friendship and the associated ability to nearly finish each other's sentences ought to be good for _something, _after all. The downside to that, of course, was that Roy had taken one good long look at Alan once they'd gotten out into daylight and conversationally asked him if he was going to go home and go to bed like a good boy, or if he was finally going to have to make good on the chainfall threat.

"Jesus, Roy, you still remember that?"

"You mean do I remember breaking a dozen different traffic laws busting ass out to your place at the behest of a very panicky Sam Flynn to find you passed out on your kitchen floor? Give me a break,_Tron_. Are you sure you're even good to drive?"

"Good enough to make it home, at least," he'd replied, with an assurance he wasn't quite sure he actually felt. "And I'll go straight to bed, promise."

"Good to hear it, because it'd sure be a shame if I had to tattle to Lora."

* * *

Driving home, as it turns out, is safe enough; the 405 is still molasses-slow with morning rush-hour traffic. Alan keeps the windows down and the radio on full blast, flipping stations occasionally, all the old time-honored tricks to keep from falling asleep at the wheel.

KLOS 95.5, classic rock. Hendrix comes on, _All Along the Watchtower, _and he smiles, thinking of Roy ranting about _Battlestar Galactica_. "'Plan', my entire ass!" Cylons. The new ones, more like _Blade Runner's _replicants. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of duplicates of each version, each identical, and yet each an individual in their own right. _But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate… _He'd had a figurine back in his old cubicle, one of the old-school Centurions. "By your command," as (_ifightfor_) the catchphrase went.

He realizes he's drifting again and changes the channel. Oldies on the USC college station, this time. Frank Sinatra, one of Lora's favorites, they'd danced to him at their wedding reception. _Fly Me to the Moon. _Alan smiles again.

_Somewhere, beyond the sea_

_Somewhere, waiting for me…_

The shudders that strike him are so sudden and so overwhelming that Alan nearly slams on the brakes. He jabs the tuner button hard enough that it actually sticks for a moment, feeling the skin beneath his white Brooks Brothers buttondown rippling into gooseflesh. The next station, thankfully, is in the middle of a commercial block.

_Home, _he thinks shakily. _Concentrate on getting home and getting to bed. Before I start hallucinating. _

The Miata behind him honks irritably, and Alan jerks the car forward again, his heart triphammering in his chest.

* * *

_Alan is cold._

_Cold to a degree he's never experienced before, a cold that numbs his limbs and slows his thoughts to a syrupy crawl. He's wet, soaked through to the skin, shirt and jacket and slacks clinging to him in a way that would certainly be uncomfortable, if only he could feel it. He can't even feel the waves dragging at his ankles anymore, although he can hear them._

_It's dark, too; the night is moonless and starless, lit only by distant flashes of lightning, and, Alan eventually realizes, by an odd dim phosphorescence In the ocean itself, shifting ghostlike in the endless expanse of black water and swirling in the foam around his feet._

Red tide, _he thinks distantly. _Like the ones in San Diego. Toxic algae. Got to get out of the water.

_Oh, but it's hard. He's so numb and so exhausted he can barely make his legs move, and he doesn't know where he's going. To his left, away from the water, he can make out hulking black shapes like buildings or cliffs, darker than the sky. There are no lights to be seen._

_He is alone._

_He staggers on away from the water, but the beach seems to stretch on forever, and the cliffs seem no closer. He stumbles, grits his teeth, forces himself to keep going. He can't stop, can't shut down. If he shuts down now, he'll never be able to start back up again._

_After a while he begins to call, hoping desperately that maybe there's someone nearby who will hear and help, though it feels and sounds like he's shouting through a throatful of sand. _

_He calls for Roy, but Roy doesn't answer. Roy is dead,_

(so long, suckers!)

_has been dead all along. He can't hear him, can't help him._

_He calls for Flynn, but Flynn doesn't answer. Flynn is gone,_

(ran away never came back flynn, **go**—!)

_has been gone for years. He can't (won't) hear him, can't help him._

_He calls for Lora, but Lora—_

(**well? what the hell are you waiting for?**)

(NO!)

_There's no one left to call._

_No one except…_

* * *

Half an hour after waking Alan finds himself standing in front of the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He's cranked the thermostat in the house up to 75, but the chill of the nightmare refuses to leave him.

If this is déjà vu, Alan never wants to feel it again. He remembers the mid-90s all too well, the grueling, miserable mid-90s, the stress that had left him teetering precariously on the edge of a nervous breakdown until finally his friends had forced him to seek help. He can't _afford_ this now, not again. Not when the people and things he loves—Sam, Roy, Lora, Encom—need him.

"If I shut down now, I'll never be able to start back up again," he mutters, and winces at the edge of gravel in his voice.


	2. Interlude 01

He doesn't know how long he's been wandering. Syncing with the system clock is useless; blocks of pico and nano and microseconds blur forward in great jerking leaps and then vanish altogether, only to return as glitching strings of characters little more than gibberish before winking out again. The dwindling part of him that's still aware enough to feel is terrified. He can't tell if it's time itself that's broken, or just him.

Sometimes the landscape itself seems to alter around him. The rough black rock of the Outlands shifts, takes on crystalline planes and facets, the black sky brightens to a graduated indigo. Light and color bleeding into the world from a crack in time's shattered shell, a memory he should not (_must not_) possess. He scans the skies, but there's no beam to guide him; only the Call, waxing and waning in slow cycles, drawing him on to...where?

Then he blinks, and it's gone. No light, no glimmering crystal canyons, just the dark, storm-wracked desert of the Outlands.

...Except it isn't all gone, not entirely. One tiny rill of light remains, sluicing down a geometric fissure in the black rock wall beside him and gathering in a small, shallow pool at its base. An energy spring, so tiny it's barely there, but _real. _

He drops to his knees beside it, retracting helmet and thrusting cupped hands into the glowing puddle. Black swirls cloud the water instantly from the residue of the Sea on his gloves, and the first mouthful is so bitter that he chokes and coughs most of it back out again. The virus cannot hurt him any more than he's already been hurt, though, and anyway there's nothing for it. If he doesn't drink, he'll die.

Finally he collapses against the rock, panting slightly as his overtaxed systems work to integrate the energy, near-flattened power levels rising and stalled subroutines clicking back on one by one. Enough to initiate self-repair functions, to _keep going_for just a little while longer.

(_Where?_)

He doesn't know.

He can see the circuitry on his fingers again, now that the black muck has been rinsed away. Blue. (_Wrong_) When had that happened?

He doesn't know.

He's still staring at them, silent and pensive, when the self-repair routines finally kick on and he slips into standby for the first time since he'd struck the surface of the Sea unknown lifetimes ago.

* * *

_He wakes only once._

_It's still dark, but the darkness is different now. Softer, somehow. Warmer. And he is no longer alone. Someone is lying against him, pressed close in the dark, slow, rhythmic breathing against his back._

_Not Clu. Whoever it is is too small, too soft themselves to be Clu. _

_He shifts slowly, turning onto his side and trying to focus his vision through the gloom to see his unfamiliar companion, but he can make out nothing, only a dim glow from a nearby window._

_A slow indrawn breath, and the figure beside him stirs. A sleepy female voice mumbles "Go back to sleep."_

_He wonders how he could ever have thought her unfamiliar._

_He doesn't answer her, simply shifts another half-turn until she's lying in his arms instead of against his back and side, and does as he's told._


End file.
